Five and a Half Hours
by Avalon3
Summary: Set during The Girl in the Fireplace Rose's thoughts during the five and a half hours when she thought the Doctor wasn't coming back.


He was gone. Just like that. No second thoughts, no hesitation. He just swung up on that white horse and crashed through the mirror, galloping off to rescue the fair damsel and live happily ever after. Straight out of a fairy tale, that was. Only…_what about us, Doctor?_

For a while Rose felt nothing but numbness. It wasn't so bad, really. It meant the pain hadn't hit her yet. Rose knew it was there, could sense it lurking on the edges of her awareness. Heart-wrenching, soul-shattering pain. She wasn't looking forward to experiencing it. Still, it was probably something she should go through, if only so she could get on with… whatever she was supposed to be getting on with. But not just yet. For now, she'd just stand here, look out at the stars, and _not_ think. Not do anything. She would just simply…be.

Mickey was handling it pretty well, Rose decided. He hadn't panicked, hadn't even cursed at the Doctor. Well, one or two angry words muttered under his breath. But overall…not too bad. He might turn out to be all right at this time travelling thing, after all.

He sat down beside her, staring gloomily at the TARDIS. "What do we do now?" he asked.

Rose shrugged one shoulder. Eventually, if things got desperate enough, she could have a go at flying the TARDIS. She'd watched the Doctor often enough. And maybe some knowledge still lingered in the back of her head, from that time when she had looked into the ship's heart. But what if things went wrong, what if she tried and failed…? She would get Mickey killed. Poor Mickey. He deserved better than that.

"Why'd he do it, Rose?"

She knew why. She understood the Doctor, oh so completely. He did it because Reinette was in immediate danger with only seconds to live, whereas Mickey and Rose could survive here quite nicely for…a very long time. Even if they ran out of air on the ship, they'd be safe in the TARDIS. There were emergency rations in there, access to water, air…hell, there was even a library, a swimming pool, and who knows what else? No, they'd be fine. And so he'd left them, to save _her._

He'd left Rose.

Rose shuddered, then gave herself an inward shake. She wouldn't think about that, wouldn't allow the feelings of betrayal to take form. She couldn't. If she did – she would fall apart. And she couldn't let that happen.

"I still don't see why he couldn't have taken the TARDIS instead of that horse." Mickey sounded a little petulant. She didn't blame him for that. He had had a hard day.

Rose knew the answer to that question too. The Doctor hadn't wanted to admit that the chances of getting the TARDIS to such an exact moment in time and space were probably a million to one. A billion to one. A googolplex to one. Even if Reinette kept the clockwork droids talking, as Rose had told her, the French woman probably had less than five minutes to live. The Doctor was good, but to land the TARDIS within a specific five minute period, in the ballroom at Versailles? What if he were out by just a minute…? No, he wouldn't have been willing to take that risk, not when there was another way. And besides, this Doctor was a little…impulsive. He didn't always think before he acted. Case in point - pressing a button that should never, ever be pressed. Jumping down a lift. And so on. It was just the way he was now.

Rose could feel herself coming back to life, could feel the numbness beginning to recede, like mist in the sunlight. She glanced at her watch. An hour and ten minutes. She had sat here like a lump for an hour and ten minutes. OK. She had indulged herself long enough. Time to do…something.

"Let's see if we can find some kind of communication device," she said, climbing to her feet. "Maybe we can send an SOS."

"It'll probably be somebody's ear," Mickey muttereddourly.

The radio, or what _might_ have been a radio, was in little bits. Cannibalized by the droids, maybe. The robots' priorities were _really_ cockeyed. Oh well. It had been a slim hope at best. Now what? Rose came to a stop and found herself staring up at the stars again.

How much time had gone by for the Doctor? Given his past visits to that era, it had to be at least a day. Maybe even a week. Or two. _Are you thinking of me? Or are you too busy being with _her? Rose shook her head. No. That thought was unworthy of her. She would not be jealous of Reinette. She would _not. Even though he left you for her? _a voice whispered silkily in her mind.

Reinette, Madame de Pompadour, was a match for the Doctor. Anyone could see that. Even the Doctor, apparently. She had seen that look on his face when he was with Reinette, knew what it meant. Rose didn't blame him. The woman was beautiful, educated, refined, intelligent, brave, and compassionate. It was the perfect romance. They were probably singing "Come What May" on top of some elephant in the middle of Paris, right now. Bitterness lanced through Rose, but she wrestled it back down. She might not be able to compete with Reinette in a million years, but she wasn't going to let herself be consumed by jealousy either. Not now, not ever. Rose had had enough of that when she met Sarah Jane. She hadn't liked what the emotion had done to her, didn't want to become that kind of person. Besides, she liked Reinette, she had discovered during their brief conversation. _Even if you _are_ trying to steal my Doctor, you harpy!_

OK. Maybe just a little jealousy.

Three hours and forty-eight minutes after the Doctor jumped through a magic mirror on the back of a white horse named Arthur, Rose was in the TARDIS library, looking for some kind of flight manual – and pondering her future.

The Doctor might still pull some kind of miracle out of his hat and find his way back to her, even though he had said it was impossible. He did the impossible on such a regular basis, that Rose had begun to wonder if the word meant the same thing to him as it did to her. Actually, she sometimes thought he was a bit like Scotty on the old Star Trek series, always saying he couldn't fix the ship, and then getting it to work just in the nick of time.

"The dilithium crystals canna take much more of this, Captain," she murmured under her breath.

But say the Doctor didn't manage a miracle? Then what? Maybe he could just live through those 3000 years and come rescue them when he got to the 51st century. He was pretty long-lived…but he also seemed to go through bodies pretty quickly. Just look how long the last one had lasted. Given his predilection for danger, Rose doubted the Doctor would make it to the 19th century, let alone the 51st.

He could find one of his future or past selves somewhere in time, steal…_borrow_ the TARDIS, and come rescue them. Surely he must have visited that time period at some point in his long life? Except Rose was fairly sure that that would break about a dozen rules of time, and possibly launch the Reapers on the universe again. She was more than a little twitchy about the time-eating creatures, and with good reason. Last time they'd eaten the Doctor and almost destroyed the earth. No, she'd rather live out the rest of her life here without him, than risk that happening again.

The rest of her life, trapped in the TARDIS with Mickey. Well, it could be worse. He wasn't the Doctor, but she did care about him. And he still cared about her, despite everything she had done to him. And it was better than being alone. Marginally.

Rose sighed as she stood on tiptoe, trying to see the books on the top shelf. Everything seemed so hopeless. It was becoming so hard to cling to her faith in the Doctor, so hard to believe that he would always keep her safe, no matter what, when she wasn't even sure she was his number one priority anymore. Or if she ever had been. She had been wrong about so many things, maybe she was wrong about him too. Wrong about the way he felt about her…

A thick book toppled off the shelf, caught her on the side of the head, then landed with a thump on her left toe. _Lovely_, she thought, bending down to hold her aching foot. _Even the books have it in for me._ She picked up the volume, then stilled.

"TARDIS Flight Manual," the cover said. No way. It couldn't be that easy. Rose flipped open the cover…and her heart sank. It wasn't. The book seemed to be full of mathematical formulas, and what notes there were, were written in some language she had never seen before. Gallifreyan, maybe. Whatever it was, the TARDIS obviously didn't want her to read it, because it wasn't bothering to translate for her. _Well, tough_, Rose thought. Despite her current depressed state of mind, she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life stuck here. She wasn't like some females, who just sat around waiting to be rescued by the first handsome man who came along…

_Oops. Really, really need to work on that jealousy thing._

"Mickey," she shouted.

"Yeah?" His head appeared around the corner of the shelf.

"See if you can find a Gallifreyan-English dictionary."

At four hours and fifteen minutes, Rose had come to the conclusion that it was probably going to take a lifetime to translate the book and figure out how to fly the TARDIS. Still, it wasn't like she had anything else to do. But she wouldn't start today. Probably not for a few days. A whole week maybe. She would wait for the Doctor. Just for a little while.

Five hours and three minutes after the Doctor left her, Rose experienced a moment of utter loss, of grief so intense that she thought might die from it, felt the certain knowledge that this time he wasn't coming back for her. Ever.

27 minutes later, he did.

FIN


End file.
